The New York Times featured an article on the work & philosophy of Les Knight, one of the leading figures espousing “voluntary human extinction.” The timing of the article was no coincidence. It was overshadowed by another major milestone in human history: on November 15th, 2022, the human population grew to 8 billion people. Is this cause for alarm or celebration? Our 8 billionth member aroused a centuries old question: what is the cost of mankind to our planet? Enter the population control debate particular to social Malthusianism. Thomas Malthus, the 19th century economist professed populations grow geometrically while food production relative to that growth increases arithmetically. What this means is growth outpaces quality of life development suggesting with more people come more hardships. This is defined as crippling poverty & mass famines.
The ancients from the Indian political philosopher Chanakya to Aristotle understood too many people can exacerbate available resources, but generally agreed having too few people was the greater existential danger for mankind. How can you build great wonders of the world like the Great Pyramids of Giza & the Lighthouse of Alexandria with crippling labor shortages? How could the ancients defend their great cities against hordes of invading armies with a depleted population? The question is: could the ancients imagine 8 billion people on Earth considering how commonplace child mortality was for their time? It was not until Ibn Khaldun taught improved socioeconomic conditions bring larger populations & higher birthrates did we realize population growth is a net positive, but to what end?
Thomas Malthus witnessed the early stages of industrialism as children went from laboring on farms to factories, but was life on the farm any better than life in the factory relative to quality-of-life mid-19th century? Suffering begets suffering begets progress turned prosperity, but have we misplaced the fact that utility alone is no guide stone for the “developmental marshalling” of mankind? The real question is: what is the cost of sapient life? Would any other sapient species fare better than mankind coupled with the mixed blessings of freewill? Both questions cannot be answered without endless speculation, but does population control exist as a zero-sum myth onto itself? The benign social engineer walks on the outer periphery of a fine line where on the other side, an up & coming Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot will exploit population control as justification for their great genocides of the future. How can theories of population control be used to prevent future holocausts?
Joseph Pisenti, the u-tuber behind Real Life Lore with a following of 6.38 million subscribers reported that as of 2016, the entire world population would fit inside Texas using the same urban density as New York City. In a world where people have infinite wants, but finite needs, the idea of maximizing complete partiality in wealth distribution for the greater good becomes increasingly illusive if not downright dystopian. Isn’t that what communism tried to achieve? How can activists like Les Knight make their case against natalism without addressing unbridled consumerism first? It is ironic how the loudest & most vociferous activists campaigning for a benign case against natalism are the same people that enjoy the protections of first world privilege that bore them into existence in the first place.
After all, how many villagers in rural Burkina Faso can readily identify with the first world problems of a few woke one percenters turned environmental activists that feel the world is too overpopulated? Perhaps the greatest environmental crime created against the planet occurred when American exceptionalism doubled up as the American Dream becoming the new gold standard of international wealth & prosperity post-World War Two? Humans surprisingly thrive on more with less. That explains how we became such great innovators. This is not to suggest humans should procreate with no existential consequences in mind defined as moral responsibilities for our species & planet.
The real defense is had in education. Do we understand the current state of the world? Do we understand enough to care? How much first world privilege is the average American willing to sacrifice to reduce their carbon footprint on the planet?
Can the same American Dream that turned us into a nation of dedicated motorists remake us into a nation of mass transit users in our major cities?
The New Columnist 